What Makes a Symbol Far Right? Co-Opted and Missed Meanings in Far-Right Iconography 2019
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Pepe the Frog
PEPE THE FROG: A Case Study of the Internet Meme and its Potential Subversive Power to Challenge Cultural Hegemonies by BEN PETTIS A THESIS Presented to the School of Journalism and Communication and the Robert D. Clark Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Spring 2018 An Abstract of the Thesis of Ben Pettis for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the School of Journalism and Communication to be taken Spring 2018 Title: Pepe the Frog: A Case Study of the Internet Meme and Its Potential Subversive Power to Challenge Cultural Hegemonies Approved: _______________________________________ Dr. Peter Alilunas This thesis examines Internet memes, a unique medium that has the capability to easily and seamlessly transfer ideologies between groups. It argues that these media can potentially enable subcultures to challenge, and possibly overthrow, hegemonic power structures that maintain the dominance of a mainstream culture. I trace the meme from its creation by Matt Furie in 2005 to its appearance in the 2016 US Presidential Election and examine how its meaning has changed throughout its history. I define the difference between a meme instance and the meme as a whole, and conclude that the meaning of the overall meme is formed by the sum of its numerous meme instances. This structure is unique to the medium of Internet memes and is what enables subcultures to use them to easily transfer ideologies in order to challenge the hegemony of dominant cultures. Dick Hebdige provides a model by which a dominant culture can reclaim the images and symbols used by a subculture through the process of commodification. -
What Is Gab? a Bastion of Free Speech Or an Alt-Right Echo Chamber?
What is Gab? A Bastion of Free Speech or an Alt-Right Echo Chamber? Savvas Zannettou Barry Bradlyn Emiliano De Cristofaro Cyprus University of Technology Princeton Center for Theoretical Science University College London [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Haewoon Kwak Michael Sirivianos Gianluca Stringhini Qatar Computing Research Institute Cyprus University of Technology University College London & Hamad Bin Khalifa University [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Jeremy Blackburn University of Alabama at Birmingham [email protected] ABSTRACT ACM Reference Format: Over the past few years, a number of new “fringe” communities, Savvas Zannettou, Barry Bradlyn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Haewoon Kwak, like 4chan or certain subreddits, have gained traction on the Web Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, and Jeremy Blackburn. 2018. What is Gab? A Bastion of Free Speech or an Alt-Right Echo Chamber?. In WWW at a rapid pace. However, more often than not, little is known about ’18 Companion: The 2018 Web Conference Companion, April 23–27, 2018, Lyon, how they evolve or what kind of activities they attract, despite France. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3184558. recent research has shown that they influence how false informa- 3191531 tion reaches mainstream communities. This motivates the need to monitor these communities and analyze their impact on the Web’s information ecosystem. 1 INTRODUCTION In August 2016, a new social network called Gab was created The Web’s information ecosystem is composed of multiple com- as an alternative to Twitter. -
To the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting: the Evolution of Gab
Proceedings of the Thirteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2019) From “Welcome New Gabbers” to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting: The Evolution of Gab Reid McIlroy-Young, Ashton Anderson Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada [email protected], [email protected] Abstract Finally, we conduct an analysis of the shooter’s pro- file and content. After many mass shootings and terror- Gab, an online social media platform with very little content ist attacks, analysts and commentators have often pointed moderation, has recently come to prominence as an alt-right community and a haven for hate speech. We document the out “warning signs”, and speculate that perhaps the attacks evolution of Gab since its inception until a Gab user car- could have been foreseen. The shooter’s anti-Semitic com- ried out the most deadly attack on the Jewish community in ments and references to the synagogue he later attacked are US history. We investigate Gab language use, study how top- an example of this. We compare the shooters’ Gab presence ics evolved over time, and find that the shooters’ posts were with the rest of the Gab user base, and find that while he was among the most consistently anti-Semitic on Gab, but that among the most consistently anti-Semitic users, there were hundreds of other users were even more extreme. still hundreds of active users who were even more extreme. Introduction Related Work The ecosystem of online social media platforms supports a broad diversity of opinions and forms of communication. In the past few years, this has included a steep rise of alt- Our work draws upon three main lines of research: inves- right rhetoric, incendiary content, and trolling behavior. -
What Role Has Social Media Played in Violence Perpetrated by Incels?
Chapman University Chapman University Digital Commons Peace Studies Student Papers and Posters Peace Studies 5-15-2019 What Role Has Social Media Played in Violence Perpetrated by Incels? Olivia Young Chapman University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/peace_studies_student_work Part of the Gender and Sexuality Commons, Peace and Conflict Studies Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, Social Influence and oliticalP Communication Commons, Social Media Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons, and the Sociology of Culture Commons Recommended Citation Young, Olivia, "What Role Has Social Media Played in Violence Perpetrated by Incels?" (2019). Peace Studies Student Papers and Posters. 1. https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/peace_studies_student_work/1 This Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Peace Studies at Chapman University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Peace Studies Student Papers and Posters by an authorized administrator of Chapman University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Peace Studies Capstone Thesis What role has social media played in violence perpetrated by Incels? Olivia Young May 15, 2019 Young, 1 INTRODUCTION This paper aims to answer the question, what role has social media played in violence perpetrated by Incels? Incels, or involuntary celibates, are members of a misogynistic online subculture that define themselves as unable to find sexual partners. Incels feel hatred for women and sexually active males stemming from their belief that women are required to give sex to them, and that they have been denied this right by women who choose alpha males over them. -
Ancient Dog Dna Unveils 11,000 Years of Canine Evolution
News in focus the world, so the origin of dogs must have been substantially earlier than that,” says Skoglund. ANCIENT DOG DNA With so many genomes, the researchers could follow ancient canine populations as UNVEILS 11,000 YEARS OF they moved and mixed, and compare these shifts with those in human populations. CANINE EVOLUTION Sometimes, the dogs’ travels paralleled peo- ple’s. When Middle Eastern farmers started Genomes trace how the animals moved around the expanding into Europe 10,000 years ago, they took dogs with them, and the animals — like world — often with humans by their side. their owners — mixed with local populations. Ancient Middle Eastern dogs that lived around By Ewen Callaway 7,000 years ago are linked to modern dogs in sub-Saharan Africa, which could be connected uman history is for the dogs. The to ‘back to Africa’ human movements around largest-ever study of ancient genomes that time. from the canines suggests that where But the histories of humans and dogs hav- people went, so did their four-legged en’t always overlapped. A major influx of friends — to a point. The research also people from the steppes of Russia and Ukraine Hidentified major regional shifts in human 5,000 years ago led to lasting change in the ancestry that left little mark on dog popula- genetic make-up of Europe’s humans, but tions, as well as times when dogs changed, but not its dogs. The study also revealed that the their owners didn’t. ancestry of European dogs has become much The analysis of more than two dozen less varied in the past 4,000 years, a period Eurasian dogs also suggests the animals were when thorough sampling of ancient human domesticated and became widespread around DNA has revealed less tumult. -
Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and Its Multifarious Enemies
Angles New Perspectives on the Anglophone World 10 | 2020 Creating the Enemy The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies Maxime Dafaure Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/369 ISSN: 2274-2042 Publisher Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur Electronic reference Maxime Dafaure, « The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies », Angles [Online], 10 | 2020, Online since 01 April 2020, connection on 28 July 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/369 This text was automatically generated on 28 July 2020. Angles. New Perspectives on the Anglophone World is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies 1 The “Great Meme War:” the Alt- Right and its Multifarious Enemies Maxime Dafaure Memes and the metapolitics of the alt-right 1 The alt-right has been a major actor of the online culture wars of the past few years. Since it came to prominence during the 2014 Gamergate controversy,1 this loosely- defined, puzzling movement has achieved mainstream recognition and has been the subject of discussion by journalists and scholars alike. Although the movement is notoriously difficult to define, a few overarching themes can be delineated: unequivocal rejections of immigration and multiculturalism among most, if not all, alt- right subgroups; an intense criticism of feminism, in particular within the manosphere community, which itself is divided into several clans with different goals and subcultures (men’s rights activists, Men Going Their Own Way, pick-up artists, incels).2 Demographically speaking, an overwhelming majority of alt-righters are white heterosexual males, one of the major social categories who feel dispossessed and resentful, as pointed out as early as in the mid-20th century by Daniel Bell, and more recently by Michael Kimmel (Angry White Men 2013) and Dick Howard (Les Ombres de l’Amérique 2017). -
Qanon and Facebook
The Boom Before the Ban: QAnon and Facebook Ciaran O’Connor, Cooper Gatewood, Kendrick McDonald and Sarah Brandt 2 ‘THE GREAT REPLACEMENT’: THE VIOLENT CONSEQUENCES OF MAINSTREAMED EXTREMISM / Document title: About this report About NewsGuard This report is a collaboration between the Institute Launched in March 2018 by media entrepreneur and for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the nonpartisan award-winning journalist Steven Brill and former Wall news-rating organisation NewsGuard. It analyses Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard QAnon-related contents on Facebook during a provides credibility ratings and detailed “Nutrition period of increased activity, just before the platform Labels” for thousands of news and information websites. implemented moderation of public contents spreading NewsGuard rates all the news and information websites the conspiracy theory. Combining quantitative and that account for 95% of online engagement across the qualitative analysis, this report looks at key trends in US, UK, Germany, France, and Italy. NewsGuard products discussions around QAnon, prominent accounts in that include NewsGuard, HealthGuard, and BrandGuard, discussion, and domains – particularly news websites which helps marketers concerned about their brand – that were frequently shared alongside QAnon safety, and the Misinformation Fingerprints catalogue of contents on Facebook. This report also recommends top hoaxes. some steps to be taken by technology companies, governments and the media when seeking to counter NewsGuard rates each site based on nine apolitical the spread of problematic conspiracy theories like criteria of journalistic practice, including whether a QAnon on social media. site repeatedly publishes false content, whether it regularly corrects or clarifies errors, and whether it avoids deceptive headlines. -
Conspiracy Theories.Pdf
Res earc her Published by CQ Press, a Division of SAGE CQ www.cqresearcher.com Conspiracy Theories Do they threaten democracy? resident Barack Obama is a foreign-born radical plotting to establish a dictatorship. His predecessor, George W. Bush, allowed the Sept. 11 attacks to P occur in order to justify sending U.S. troops to Iraq. The federal government has plans to imprison political dissenters in detention camps in the United States. Welcome to the world of conspiracy theories. Since colonial times, conspiracies both far- fetched and plausible have been used to explain trends and events ranging from slavery to why U.S. forces were surprised at Pearl Harbor. In today’s world, the communications revolution allows A demonstrator questions President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship — a popular conspiracists’ issue — at conspiracy theories to be spread more widely and quickly than the recent “9-12 March on Washington” sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots and other conservatives ever before. But facts that undermine conspiracy theories move opposed to tax hikes. less rapidly through the Web, some experts worry. As a result, I there may be growing acceptance of the notion that hidden forces N THIS REPORT S control events, leading to eroding confidence in democracy, with THE ISSUES ......................887 I repercussions that could lead Americans to large-scale withdrawal BACKGROUND ..................893 D from civic life, or even to violence. CHRONOLOGY ..................895 E CURRENT SITUATION ..........900 CQ Researcher • Oct. 23, 2009 • www.cqresearcher.com AT ISSUE ........................901 Volume 19, Number 37 • Pages 885-908 OUTLOOK ........................902 RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................906 THE NEXT STEP ................907 CONSPIRACY THEORIES CQ Re search er Oct. -
Corrupted Infrastructures of Meaning: Post-Truth Identities Online
Corrupted Infrastructures of Meaning: Post-truth Identities Online Catherine R. Baker and Andrew Chadwick1 Forthcoming in Howard Tumber and Silvio Waisbord (eds) (2021) The Routledge Companion to Media Misinformation and Populism. New York: Routledge. May 12, 2020. Summary This article outlines a framework for analyzing post-truth identities. Our overarching argument is that post-truth identities emerge from a confluence of individual-level and contextual factors. Cognitive biases that shape how individuals encounter and process information have recently been granted freer rein as a result of changes in the technological basis of media systems in the advanced democracies. But in addition to these macro- structural changes, we suggest that attention should also focus on how post-truth identities come to be formed and maintained at the micro level, in everyday life. Drawing upon the social identity theory tradition in social psychology, we assume that identity is inextricably tied to group formation and the maintenance of group belonging. Post-truth identities rely upon corrupted, self-initiated infrastructures of meaning that are animated by emotional narratives and repositories of cherry-picked, misrepresented justifying ‘evidence.’ These infrastructures are, in part, enabled by the unique affordances of social media for decentralizing, but also algorithmically organizing, the production and circulation of socially consequential information. Identity affirmation is reinforced by the major online platforms’ commercially driven, personalized recommendation features, such as Google search’s autosuggest, YouTube’s autoplay, and Facebook’s news feed. The affordances these create contribute to shared experiences among believers but can also make it more likely that larger audiences are exposed to falsehoods as part of everyday searching, reading, viewing, and sharing. -
FBI's Russian-Influence Probe Includes a Look at Breitbart
3/21/2017 FBI-led investigative team examines role of conservative news sites in Russia campaign | McClatchy DC WHITE HOUSE MARCH 20, 2017 5:05 PM FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites 1 of 5 i BY PETER STONE AND GREG GORDON McClatchy Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories — some fictional — that favored Donald Trump’s presidential bid, two people familiar with the inquiry say. Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said. The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said. Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the bot attacks are part of an FBI-led investigation into a multifaceted Russian operation to influence last year’s elections. Investigators examining the bot attacks are exploring whether the far-right news operations took any actions to assist Russia’s operatives. Their participation, however, wasn’t necessary for the bots to amplify their news through Twitter and Facebook. -
Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right
Maik Fielitz, Nick Thurston (eds.) Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right Political Science | Volume 71 Maik Fielitz, Nick Thurston (eds.) Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right Online Actions and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US With kind support of Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Na- tionalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No- Derivatives 4.0 (BY-NC-ND) which means that the text may be used for non-commer- cial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To create an adaptation, translation, or derivative of the original work and for com- mercial use, further permission is required and can be obtained by contacting [email protected] Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. © 2019 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Typeset by Alexander Masch, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4670-2 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4670-6 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839446706 Contents Introduction | 7 Stephen Albrecht, Maik Fielitz and Nick Thurston ANALYZING Understanding the Alt-Right. -
Free Speech Systems LLC D.B.A
WARNING LETTER Date: April 9, 2020 TO: [email protected] – Mr. Alexander E. Jones, Free Speech Systems LLC d.b.a. Infowars.com 3005 S Lamar Blvd Ste D109-398 Austin, TX 78760-9549 RE: Unapproved and Misbranded Products Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) This is to advise you that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reviewed your website at the Internet address www.infowarsstore.com on March 26, 2020 and April 6, 2020, respectively. We also reviewed your websites at the Internet addresses www.infowars.com and www.banned.video, where you direct consumers to your website, www.infowarsstore.com, to purchase your products. The FDA has determined that your www.infowarsstore.com website offers “Superblue Silver Immune Gargle,” “SuperSilver Whitening Toothpaste,” “SuperSilver Wound Dressing Gel” and “Superblue Fluoride Free Toothpaste” for sale in the United States and that these products are intended to mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure COVID-191 in people. Based on our review, these products are unapproved new drugs sold in violation of section 505(a) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), 21 U.S.C. § 355(a). Furthermore, these products are misbranded drugs under section 502 of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. § 352. The introduction or delivery for introduction of these products into interstate commerce is prohibited under sections 301(a) and (d) of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. § 331(a) and (d). There is currently a global outbreak of respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus that has been named “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” (SARS-CoV-2).